The Devil's Puzzle

by Clare O'Donohue

  “One small break-in,” Bernie said. “That’s probably the most excitement we’ll have in town all year.”

  “We’ve had lots of excitement,” I reminded her. “Even in the shop.” I nodded toward the door, where we had once found a local man dead. “Frankly, I would think you would all be frightened to hear about another odd death in our little town.”

  “This is different,” Maggie said. “This is a skeleton. There’s no killer walking around.”

  “Exactly,” Susanne spoke up. “It’s more like town history than murder.”

  There was a general chattering of agreement on that point—chattering that would get out of hand unless I put a stop to it.

  “If we’re done with the town news, we have a quilt show to put on,” I reminded the group, feeling like a broken record. “I’m a little freaked out by how much work this is, but I may have an idea, and I need your help. I had a conversation this afternoon with one of the shop regulars about how much the history of this country is reflected in the history of quilting. And it got me thinking. I want to do something that’s tied in with the history of Archers Rest,” I said. “I think that would work well with the idea of it being the 350th anniversary.”

  “Maybe we can do a quilt that celebrates different events of the town,” Susanne suggested. “We could do appliquéd blocks. Each block would represent people or events. Sort of a Baltimore Album. I’ve always wanted to do one of those.”

  “I have to admit I’m not sure what that looks like,” I said.

  “It’s a style of quilt made of ornately appliquéd blocks, with floral themes, ships, animals, things like that. It was done in Baltimore in the 1840s, for just a short time,” Susanne explained.

  Eleanor leaned forward. “You’ve seen them, Nell, it’s just that you’ve seen ones with holiday subjects and contemporary fabrics. Beautiful quilts, really. It would be nice to make one.”

  “It will take too long. It can take months, even years, to do one of those,” Bernie said. “We’ve got how long?”

  “Seven weeks,” I told her. “What if we do quilt patterns that were popular in the past, maybe tied to a particular decade? We could use reproduction fabrics to make quilts to represent the Civil War, the Depression . . .”

  I could see everyone getting excited.

  “I have a crazy quilt I made,” Susanne said. “It’s really beautiful silks and satins and hand embroidery. They were popular in the 1870s to the end of the century.”

  “And I could do a broderie perse to represent the early years of our nation,” Maggie offered.

  That one I knew. Broderie perse quilts were made from cutting flowers and other images from a fabric and appliquéing them onto a different fabric. It was a way to use up the scraps of beautiful printed fabrics at a time when imported prints were expensive and hard to get. Now it’s a great shortcut to appliquéd quilts.

  “I’d like to do a Hawaiian quilt with pineapples and flowers. It could represent the late 1950s when Hawaii became a state,” Bernie jumped in.

  “Aren’t they complicated to make?” Natalie asked.

  “Simple, really,” Bernie assured her. “You just fold a piece of fabric into eighths, cut out an image, and unfold the fabric. Presto, you have a circle of repeating images, kind of like making a paper snowflake or string of paper dolls. It’s fun.”

  “We would need something contemporary,” Eleanor said. “I’d like to put my name on something modern, something that speaks to the future of quilting. It’s important people realize that this isn’t just a piece of history, but a part of our present lives and our futures.”

  “And not just bed quilts, but pieces of art,” Maggie agreed. “It’s a pity so many wonderful quilt artists are unknown to us because they didn’t think to sign and date their quilts. We’re left guessing who they could have been. I suppose they didn’t understand how valuable those quilts would be to future generations.”

  Bernie leaned forward. “I’ll tell you why they didn’t value it: because it was a woman’s art. If the majority of quilters were men, quilting would be taken more seriously as the art form it is, instead of treated as a quaint old custom.”

  “It’s not just that it’s mostly women,” Carrie argued. “It’s also that it’s utilitarian. It’s something you sleep under, so people forget it’s also art. That’s why it’s not as valued an art form as, say, a painting.”

  “A vase is utilitarian, but no one says ceramicists aren’t artists,” Bernie shot back.

  “Okay,” I stepped in. “Bernie, we’re not turning this quilt meeting into a protest march. We all agree that people don’t fully realize the work and talent of the millions of women through the centuries who have designed and made quilts, or for that matter of all the men who’ve also quilted. But we’re going to teach them. Our show will make it clear that quilters from the past influence current quilting, but there is also room for growth and change.” I was getting interested in organizing the show for the first time. “Anybody else want to volunteer to make something?”

  “I could do a whole cloth. That could represent the quilts brought over from Europe,” Natalie offered. “That way I wouldn’t have to piece or appliqué, and I could get started right away quilting on the longarm. I’m due July 26th, but just in case I’m early . . .” She patted her growing belly.

  “Great,” I said. “And I can do something from the thirties. I’ve always wanted to make a grandmother’s flower garden.”

  Natalie laughed. We all looked at her, puzzled. “Nell, considering the circumstances, it might not be the best choice,” she said.

  A grandmother’s flower garden uses only one shape—a hexagon—to create the impression of brightly colored flowers. It’s a beautiful quilt pattern and one I’d been dying to try, but Natalie was right. I’d have to think of something else.

  “It’s a shame that a skeleton is dictating our quilt patterns,” Bernie said. “But it is fascinating how things work. Some gambler comes to town and then, twenty, thirty, even forty years later, he eliminates a perfectly beautiful quilt from our show. It’s that butterfly effect the scientists talk about. One small action has repercussions you would never expect.”

  Maggie pointed a finger at Bernie. “Don’t be too sure he was a gambler. I was thinking how they used to give poker chips out at the movie theater. You remember, Eleanor?”

  Eleanor nodded. “It was some promotion. You collected them and you got a free movie pass or something. But that was years and years ago.”

  “When years ago?” I asked.

  “Your mother and uncle collected them. They had jars of them. I would say your uncle Henry was about fourteen or fifteen.”

  “That would put it in the early seventies,” I said.

  Maggie pointed toward me. “I’ll bet that we could ask Jesse if it was just a regular poker chip or a special one, something that was given out at the movies. I’ll bet there’s a way to tell. We should look into it.”

  “We could,” I said reluctantly, “but we’re kind of getting off track. We’re supposed to be planning a quilt show.”

  “Oh, we’ll get to that,” Bernie scolded me, “but don’t you think we need to discuss the skeleton first?”

  Eleanor laughed. “Well, you tried to get them to talk about quilting, Nell. You should give yourself a little credit for effort.”

  “I don’t think Glad will see it that way when I have nothing to display at the quilt show.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Don’t overdo it, Nell. You don’t make a quilt in one go. You make it piece by piece, choice by choice. Tonight you decided on the theme. That was enough. Now let’s just enjoy ourselves, and talk about the body in Eleanor’s garden.”

  CHAPTER 11

  After the meeting, and another hour of conjecture about the skeleton and the break-in at the high school, I stayed at the shop and pored over pattern books. There were dozens of possibilities, from elaborate appliquéd pieces to simple nine patches. And the names were
all evocative of the experiences of past quilters, dealing with whatever life brought them, from broken dishes to bear’s paws, shoofly to double wedding ring. Since quilting was—and is—an informal art form, many quilt patterns go by several names. One person might call a quarter-circle block surrounded by small triangles a crown of thorns, another might call it a New York beauty, but the pattern is the same. As I went through the pattern books, the problem I was facing was not a lack of options, but too many. I’d been through three books on quilt history and I still hadn’t found what I wanted to make.

  Finally, after a desperate search through Internet sites, something jumped out at me. A devil’s puzzle, a pattern first made popular in the late 1800s. The name referred to several different patterns, but the one I chose was an easy block of rectangles and triangles that when put together create a kind of lattice effect. It seemed like something I could make quickly but would appear to have been the result of a lot of effort—sort of how I wanted the quilt show to turn out. And it had a cool name that fit my mood. Everything these days felt like a puzzle—the quilt show, Eleanor’s love life, and especially the skeleton—and I knew that somehow quilting was going to help me through it all.

  When I’d first come to Archers Rest, I was a bit of a mess. I was confused about who to love, where to live, and what kind of work I wanted to do. Quilting, with its dual need for logic and creative thinking, had helped me find my way. But so had looking into the few odd deaths that had occurred in town. Solving homicides, it turned out, required the same balance of logic and creative thinking. Maybe figuring out why Eleanor was so against remarriage would also make use of those skills.

  But there was something about this particular mystery that bothered me more than any other I’d been involved with: It wasn’t any of my business. Not that this had ever stopped me before. As Jesse and Eleanor were fond of reminding me, I’d jumped into murder investigations as if they were nothing more than a logic puzzle with a body. I was getting something of a reputation for it, which I wasn’t entirely thrilled about. For me uncovering the truth had always been the motivation, and for the most part I hadn’t worried about where that led. This time, though, I was worried about Eleanor.

  There was no one in the world I loved more than my grandmother. She had taken me into her home, her shop, and her circle of friends. I didn’t want my attempt to repay her to turn into an unintended betrayal of our friendship. I thought about just staying out of it, but what she had said earlier—“Not everyone deserves that kind of love”—nagged at me.

  I decided I would call Maggie in the morning and ask for her opinion. Maggie had known my grandmother since they were both in their twenties. And like Eleanor, she wasn’t shy about telling me to mind my own business.

  I locked up the shop and headed for home. Eleanor had taken Barney with her at about ten o’clock, when the meeting had broken up, and she’d also taken the car. As sleepy as I was, I was glad about that. It was a beautifully warm May evening, and walking the mile back to the house would be the perfect way to get me ready for sleep.

  Downtown Archers Rest, if you can call it that, is only a few blocks long, with a cemetery on one end and on the other, a winding road that leads to—among other places—my grandmother’s old Victorian. Bordering it to the west is the Hudson River, and to the east, farmland and several old homes that date back to the colonial days. The homes are all museums now, available for tours led by people in Revolutionary War costumes—a kind of poor man’s Williamsburg. Beyond the homes is a highway that, if you went south on it for three hours, would take you to New York City.

  Archers Rest isn’t particularly unique or filled with interesting sights, but its citizens are proud of it. George Washington had been up and down the Hudson River Valley, but as far as I knew had never so much as hoisted a tankard in Archers Rest. There were skirmishes during the Revolutionary War, but anything of even the smallest historical significance had taken place elsewhere. The town’s main claim to American history was that in 1777 the British had briefly considered Archers Rest as a place to wage a battle before deciding to go farther south.

  I knew the point of the Fourth of July celebration was to get tourists to visit Archers Rest, and maybe it would, but I liked the quiet. It was a shame that tourists coming up for a parade and a fireworks display would miss out on all this quiet. At least they would get a good quilt show. Hopefully.

  Walking home, I got to enjoy the quiet. I looked at the darkened shops and empty streets, and listened to the only sound there was: crickets calling out to each other. Tonight, though, I didn’t feel alone on the streets. It was as though someone was walking with me. I looked around repeatedly as I moved toward home. Despite the hair standing up on the back of my neck, as far as I could tell, I was all by myself.

  “Maybe it’s the ghost of John Archer,” I said, trying to laugh off my fears. I knew, as Jesse had said, that Archer was safely buried in the cemetery. It wasn’t his grave we’d uncovered. It wasn’t his ghost we’d upset. “Go haunt someone else, will ya? I’m tired,” I called out to the night air.

  As the words came out of my mouth, I heard a loud bang behind me. I turned but there was nothing, just a sudden cold breeze that I told myself was only the wind coming off the river.

  I kept walking and got to the house just after midnight. I thought I heard noises coming from the backyard, so I walked through the kitchen and opened the back door. I was tired and should have gone up to bed, but something in the yard caught my eye. I went over to the hole in my grandmother’s overgrown rose garden. There was nothing different about it. The skeleton had been removed and it was now just a hole, dark earth, and small stones. I decided I must have been seeing things. But as I turned back toward the house I heard the noise again, this time from the trees.

  I took a deep breath and walked toward the trees, looking for any sign of an intruder. I told myself it probably was a squirrel or a deer. But it didn’t seem like animal noises. It seemed like someone’s heavy breath. I could feel my heart beating just a little faster. I moved my foot forward, but I couldn’t make myself take a step. Instead I stood as still as I could, and listened.

  My grandmother’s house is on several acres, and toward the back of her land the trees are densely planted. Little light can penetrate, especially on a night like this, with a new moon in the sky. And beyond the trees is the river, a sheet of black on even the brightest night. I could hear what sounded like rustling, maybe an animal, but heavier than a squirrel. And larger. Whatever—whoever—had left blood on the skeleton might be back, looking for something else.

  I thought about walking into the woods to find the source of the noise, but my feet were only interested in moving toward the house. As my pace quickened, getting me closer to safety with each step, I told myself that my curiosity wasn’t worth coming face-to-face with whatever had retreated there.

  “Maybe I’m maturing,” I said once I was on the porch. “I just have to make sure Eleanor doesn’t find out or she’ll take all the credit.”

  When I walked into the kitchen I bumped into Oliver, putting two cups of tea on a tray.

  “Did you hear anything in the back?” I asked him.

  “No. I just came down to make your grandmother some tea. I think a cup of tea is a perfect way to end the day,” he said. “What did you hear in the backyard?”

  “Nothing. Just animals,” I said, deciding that was, in fact, what I’d heard. “I’m going to sleep, but I may be the only one in the whole town. I keep seeing, or think I’m seeing, something out there in the dark.”

  “There are more secrets per capita in a small town than in a big city,” Oliver said. “In a big city you don’t have to keep your life secret because no one cares. But in Archers Rest . . .”

  “Everyone knows everything. Or tries to.”

  “Which brings up an interesting point: How long do you think I can keep Eleanor from finding out about the engagement?”

  I could feel myself blush. “
A little while longer,” I said. “I think you can wait until things are cleared up with . . .” I motioned toward the hole in the backyard.

  “That ring is burning a hole in my pocket.” He seemed excited, and I couldn’t tell him that he might be—we both might have been—wrong about Eleanor’s reaction. “You were the one who thought this was a good idea, Nell. You’re not changing your mind?”

  “Not a bit. I just think you should wait a little longer.”

  Maybe with time I could turn Eleanor’s answer to a yes. Or at least find a reason that would soften the blow Oliver would feel if Eleanor turned him down.

  Oliver assembled his tea tray. “She’s going to make a lovely bride, isn’t she?”

  “She will,” I said. In my heart, I added, “I hope.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “You’re up early.” Maggie greeted me at the door a little after seven, a cat tangling itself in her legs.

  “He must be new.”

  “Showed up a few days ago. Must have heard I was a soft touch. Come into the kitchen. I’ve got some rhubarb muffins I just baked.”

  We sat in the kitchen enjoying muffins and coffee, and talked about the quilt show and quilting in general. I was halfway through a sentence about some new batiks that had arrived in the shop when Maggie leaned back in her chair.

  “Okay, enough small talk. What’s this about?”

  “I just wanted to visit.”

  “You saw me yesterday. Nothing much has happened between ten o’clock last night and seven this morning,” she said. “Is this about the skeleton? Do you know something you didn’t want to say in front of Eleanor?”

  I put down my coffee cup and nodded. “It’s not about the skeleton, but there was something I didn’t want to say in front of my grandmother.”

  “Jesse,” Maggie said.